Motley Moose – Archive

Yesterday, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) passed away at age 82. The speech mentioned as his most important was his short speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1984 where he described Reagan’s “Shining City on a Hill” as actually a tale of two cities: one for the rich and one for the rest of America. It is a theme revisited many times over the years because, really, Republicans simply will not give up on their ideal America – where the wealthy and connected have the power and the have-nots fight among themselves for the scraps left over.

Gov. Mario Cuomo:

President Reagan told us from the very beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. “Government can’t do everything,” we were told, so it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer, and what falls from the table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class.

You know, the Republicans called it “trickle-down” when Hoover tried it. Now they call it “supply side.” But it’s the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded, for the people who are locked out, all they can do is stare from a distance at that city’s glimmering towers. […]

The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. “The strong” — “The strong,” they tell us, “will inherit the land.”

We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact, and we have more than once. […]

Their policies divide the nation into the lucky and the left-out, into the royalty and the rabble.

Transcript below the fold …

On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new regulations to cut ground level ozone (smog) levels in order to improve public health.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy:

Her editorial, published at CNN.com, explains the new regulations:

For 44 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has defended the American people’s right to breathe clean air by setting national air quality standards for common air pollutants.

Successful public health protection depends on the latest science. Think of it this way: If your doctor wasn’t using the latest medical science, you’d be worried you weren’t getting the best care.

That’s why the Clean Air Act requires EPA to update air quality standards every five years, to ensure standards “protect public health with an adequate margin of safety” based on the latest scientific evidence.

So today, following science and the law, I am proposing to update national ozone pollution standards to clean up our air, improve access to crucial air quality information, and protect those most at-risk — our children, our elderly, and people already suffering from lung diseases like asthma. […]

Ground-level ozone pollution, commonly known as smog, comes from industrial action, motor vehicles, power plants, and other activities. Breathing ozone irritates the nose, throat, and lungs. Thousands of scientific studies (from renowned institutions like Harvard University, the University of North Carolina Medical School, and many others) tell us that cutting air pollution to meet ozone standards lowers the risk of asthma, permanent lung damage, cardiovascular harm, and premature death.

Today is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech calling upon us to work with him to build a Great Society.

In that speech, President Johnson outlined the principles behind the programs he would later propose; programs  intended to lift Americans out of poverty, first by ending discrimination, then by putting a safety net under our elderly in the form of Medicare and finally, by launching programs intended to improve the well-being of all of our citizens. Some programs were resounding successes and some were unable to be implemented or were dismantled by Ronald Reagan and his demon spawn ideological progeny.

The paths could not be more clearly marked. We can be a Great Society or we can be the puny country that the Reagan Republicans, and now Ryan Republicans, want for us; a country  where George W. Bush’s have-mores hoard the wealth and despoil our natural resources: a path leading us to a country where the middle class is destroyed and our children are left with an earth that is uninhabitable.

A quick scan of right-wing opinion pieces shows that, to Republicans, championing the causes of minorities and the working poor is called “Democrats pandering”. That is because to them it would be pandering, an attempt to get people’s votes by pretending to care about them. To Democrats, civil rights and women’s reproductive rights and the rights of workers and LGBT rights are not poll-tested talking points … they are the core of our party and embedded as Democratic Party principles.

It is not pandering, it is who we are.

It is the promise of a Great Society, one that “rests on abundance and liberty for all” and “demands an end to poverty and racial injustice” with this reminder from LBJ: “we have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.”

In Excelsis Deo (West Wing, NBC – 1999)

… a haunted Toby (Richard Schiff) learns more about a forgotten Korean War hero who died alone on the district’s cold streets wearing a coat that Toby once donated to charity.

President Bartlett: “Toby, if we start pulling strings like this, you don’t think every homeless veteran will come out of the woodwork?”

Toby Ziegler: “We can only hope, sir”.